A 12-year-old girl from Bihar was sexually assaulted by two men after her mother sold her for ₹16,000 and 10 saris four months ago, Varanasi police said on
Sunday.
The accused trio have been arrested.
The police said the woman, a native of Arwal district in Bihar, sold her minor daughter to Lahru Yadav from Chandauli district in Uttar Pradesh four months ago.
“When the girl resisted, she was given the impression that she was getting married to Lahru. They took the victim to a temple at Chahania in Varanasi and organised a fake private wedding. Thereafter, Lahru, a widower and father of two sons, rented a room in Sarnath and sexually assaulted her all these months,” Sarnath police station in-charge Pankaj Tripathi
said.
Tripathi said Lahru abandoned the girl at the Manduadih railway station on May 21.
“Auto driver Ravi Verma spotted her, promised help, took her to his home in Pahariya and raped her for several days in confinement. The police conducted a raid and rescued the girl on Sunday after locals informed a cop about the presence of an unidentified minor at Ravi’s home,” he said.
Ravi managed to give the police a slip but was chased and nabbed in Varanasi. They next raided Lahru’s place, where he was found with the victim’s mother.
The woman claimed that she was a widow and extremely poor.
“I had met Lahru on a train. He saw us and offered me money for my daughter. We didn’t have food at home, so I agreed to the deal,” she told reporters.
Jitendra Pal, a police inspector in Sarnath, said: “Going by the statements of Lahru’s neighbours in Chandauli, it appears that he is a habitual sex offender. Recently, he got a hair transplant in New Delhi to look younger. We are probing the case.”